News

December 2013: Double PhD Mariya Petrova

Thursday, December 5th 2013, Mariya Petrova obtained the first double PhD in Bioscience Engineering between KU Leuven and University of Antwerp with Sarah Lebeer (UAntwerpen), Jos Vanderleyden and Jan Balzarini (KU Leuven) as promotors. She defended with success her PhD entitled ‘Molecular and functional studies of lectins in Lactobacillus rhamnosus’. In addition, we were honored that Gregor Reid, one of the world’s best-known experts on probiotics microorganisms, was one of the jury members. He gave a very inspiring talk on “Reprogramming humans - can microbiome and probiotic research achieve it?” on the occasion of the PhD defense of Mariya.

December 2013: Editors' choice in Environmental Pollution

A publication of our research group (Spatial distribution assessment of particulate matter in an urban street canyon using biomagnetic leaf monitoring of tree crown deposited particles) was put in the spotlights in the Editors' choice section of the journal Environmental Pollution and is downloadable for free for one month using this link.

October 2013: Thumbs up for the IGEM team KU Leuven in finals Boston!

A team of sixteen KU Leuven students has earned a spot in the iGEM finals, an international synthetic biology competition being held in Boston from 1-4 November. Among them are three Bachelors in Bioscience Engineering Cell- and Gene Biotechnology from the University of Antwerp, i.e. Pieter De Bruyn, Sylvie Weckx and Sander Wuyts, who currently study for their Masters at KU Leuven. They are supervised by Dr. Ingmar Claes, who is also affiliated to our research group here in Antwerp. Therefore, we will definitely hold thumbs for their final in Boston this weekend.

The iGEM – ‘international Genetically Engineered Machines’ – competition is organised by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). 204 teams from around the world compete. The teams immerse themselves in synthetic biology, the science of manipulating DNA to build or retool living cells for specific tasks.

May 2013: Poster prize Knowledge for Growth congress, Ghent

April 2013: Prof.Dr. Sarah Lebeer in UA-Magazine

On April, 2013, our professor of the Laboratory on Applied Microbiology and Immunology, Sarah Lebeer, appeared in the magazine of the University of Antwerp with an article regarding the amount of female professors in the teaching staff of our university. Read it here (pdf_827kB).